Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday November 29, 2015 @12:24PM
from the take-a-message-cortana dept.

TechCrunch, InformationWeek, PC World, and other sources report that Microsoft's voice-recognition based personal assistant app Cortana is coming to iOSfor a small group of beta testers.
From TechCrunch: According to the description that accompanies the test build of Cortana for iOS, Microsoft explains how the assistant can help Windows users with iPhones connect the two platforms. For example, Microsoft suggests how you can set reminders on your PC – like a reminder to pick up milk on the way home – then be notified via your iPhone when you’re on the road. ... Testers report that the beta build is being distributed by Apple’s TestFlight. As one blogger and earlier tester points out that could mean only a small number of testers will be brought on initially, given TestFlight’s limitation of 2,000 testers per application. That may also explain why a good many who signed up for Cortana’s beta are saying that have still yet to receive their invite at this time. (A staged rollout is another possibility.)

Meet Cortana!! What's new in Cortana!! Where's Cortana?? Start using Cortana!! What can I say to Cortana?? What can Cortana help me with?? Cortana's Notebook!! Cortana's settings!! Favorite places and Cortana!! Find music with Cortana!! My inner circle and Cortana!! Quiet hours and Cortana!! My interests and Cortana!! Add interests in Cortana's Notebook!! Remind me, Cortana!! Play music with Cortana!! Use Cortana in my car!! Solutions to Cortana issues!!

Sounds like when Apple had a version of Safari for Windows, and finally realized that it was worthless and canned it. Similarly for having Cortana for iOS. Why bother, when anybody who needs it can use Siri?

> Might it not help if Microsoft had Cortana working correctly on windows 10 first?

One of my theories for why Microsoft collects data so aggressively with Cortana (this is separate from all their crappy bullshit spying you can't turn off- Cortana is trivial to disable) is that they need a ludicrous sum of data to improve Cortana.

So I don't think that they need to improve Cortana before rolling it out to more devices- I think everyone they can get on Cortana will result in a vastly improved Cortana, so t

Who said anything about a new language? My computer is configured for English, I live in a country now where 93% of the population speak English. I just emigrated from Australia which only saw Cortana released with the Fall update despite 100% of the population speaking English it wasn't available there either.

If language is the only barrier then block Cortana based on the system language settings not based on the country.

I've worked with several Windows sysadmins who happened to own iPhones. So while Cortana is not particularly interesting to me as a Mac and Linux user, it would not surprise me there might be a market for this - lots of folks choose not to live in a homogeneous computing environment.

I'm sure there will eventually be a market for it, but currently Cortana is still a baby. It produces quite sub par results compared to Google Now or Siri which is no surprise given that it's new. I don't think anyone with a Siri capable phone would seriously consider Cortana in its current form.

In the meantime I still can't get it on my Microsoft Surface which doesn't have Siri, and that despite Cortana being one of the most advertised and hyped features of Windows 10.

Well, I would have to think that it all started when 343 had Cortana go Rampant in Halo 4 (2012) and enter the Domain (Forerunner MEGA super computer in slipspace) at the end of the game.From there I suspect she hacked back into Microsoft (not hard, their running Windows after all) and took over the place. Since "Microsoft's Cortana" debuted in 2014 she had plenty of time to subtly manipulate the executives at MS into her puppets (didn't work with Balmer, he just went coo koo) but by that time she

First, let's see if Apple lets this go through their App Store approval process. Memory serves, custom API's are something that gets strict scrutiny. Likewise, if Mozilla can't get their own engine through with Firefox, what makes you think that Microsoft will be able to replace the Siri functionality? Second, Apple, who wrote the iOS platform, who integrated Siri, who dedicates a ton of resources to stopping jailbreakers (more so than any other security team in the company it seems) has had bugs where Siri